All-girl Motley Crue tribute band comes to Limelight Eventplex

Wednesday

Jul 30, 2014 at 4:27 PM

THOMAS BRUCH of the Journal Star

Mercedes Mars couldn’t resist the help wanted ad she saw in late 2006 — three women’s faces superimposed over Motley Crue band member’s bodies in chains, spikes and black leather with a blank spot seeking a “loud, rude and aggressive” guitarist.

“I just said, ‘I got to know who these girls are,’” said Mars, now the guitarist for the all-girl Motley Crue tribute band Girls Girls Girls. “I didn’t know what a tribute band was, but I figured these girls looked so funny and cool in this ad.”

When Girls Girls Girls plays a rare Illinois show Saturday night at the Limelight Eventplex, the New York City-based quartet will hook the crowd with the same funny and cool antics that attracted Mars in the first place. The brainchild of creator, band manager and former bassist Patricia Nilsen, Girls Girls Girls acts as a mirror to the famed hair metal band with a feminine twist. The songs are the same. The names are mostly the same — Mercedes Mars is only a slight departure from Motley Crue’s real guitarist, Mick Mars. But the thigh-high boots, ripped tights and musical talent suggest a version of Crue that even the most diehard fans will find appealing.

Nilsen had never picked up an instrument in her life before attending a Ladies Rock camp in 2006 and meeting future Girls Girls Girls drummer Tawny Lee. A lifelong Cruehead, Nilsen had serious ambitions to start an all-girls Motley Crue tribute band that Lee did not take seriously.

“Maybe she was serious; I didn’t think she was serious about starting a band,” Lee said. “So, I was like ‘yeah sure, I’ll be your Tawny Lee.’”

It may have seemed like a half-baked idea at first, but Mars and singer Vixen Neil were brought into the fold and within a year, the band was in a van every weekend touring the East Coast. Girls Girls Girls’s career arc paralleled many of its rock contemporaries on a more compressed timeline, including auspicious beginnings playing a birthday party at a strip club for the band’s first gig.

From there, word of mouth and the powerful influence of Myspace propelled the band to notoriety in its formative years between 2007 and 2009. The girls were even featured prominently in the VH1 special “That Metal Show.” Following a break-up that lasted three years, its reunion show in 2012 packed the Brooklyn Bowl and featured a six-months pregnant Nilsen rocking the bass once again before she called it quits to become the band manager.

Since all the band members have other jobs, Girls Girls Girls performs on the weekends, explaining their scant visits to the Midwest. But successful trips to Minnesota and opening for Lynyrd Skynyrd at a rock festival in Colorado this year have boosted their pedigree once again.

Approaching its 100th show, the band has found a successful formula in blending its own musicality with Crue songs from all eras of the band. Lee said they throw in some minor songs from the repertoire that Crue rarely plays at live acts. And whether it’s Neil inviting all the girls in the crowd onstage for “Same Ol’ Situation” or the whole audience singing the chorus of “Home Sweet Home,” Girls Girls Girls will wring out the fun in every Crue song.

“We’re not doing this for anything except out of love and seriousness and the desire to rock the hell out of every place we go,” Mars said.

Thomas Bruch can be reached at 686-3188 or tbruch@pjstar.com. Follow him on Twitter @ThomasBruch.